After $30 Billion Mistake, Can Tim Cook Manage Apple?

The flaws with Apple Maps and previously with Apple's voice recognition software, Siri, reveal some deep flaws with Tim Cook's work as CEO. You might think that Tim Cook is doing a spectacular job. After all, since taking over as CEO on August 24, 2011, Apple stock has risen 74%, and its revenues and profits have soared 66% and 85% in the last year.

But since the Apple Maps fiasco, Apple has lost $30 billion in stock market value, reports The Guardian. At the core of this loss in value may well be the gap between the technical reality of a new product and the way that product is sold to the public. Plenty of technologies are imperfect when they are first sold to the public. It appears as though Apple Maps had so many flaws -- I pointed out its six most epic fails -- that Apple could be rotting from the stem down.

How so? Either Cook was not aware of the problems with Apple Maps -- in which case he is showing that he does not care about the quality of the products that Apple makes. Or Cook knew about the flaws and decided to launch the iPhone 5 anyway. And if he did the latter, the messaging Cook used to describe the product set expectations that were far better than the reality. And one of the most basic principles of marketing anything is that it is far better to exceed diminished expectations than to fall short of exuberant ones.

A case in point is the way Apple's web site described the product before the launch. As TheGuardian pointed out, the words were: "Designed by Apple from the ground up, maps gives you turn-by-turn spoken directions, interactive 3D views, and the stunning flyover feature. All of which may just make this app the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever." Those italics are mine -- and they highlight just how oversold Apple Maps was.

The core of Apple's problem may be an Apple executive by the name of Scott Forstall. As former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gasse pointed out, Forstall was behind the flawless Apple Maps demo and those flowery adjectives. And Forstall's demo of the buggy Siri "seemed not only to understand every question he put to it, but to have a snappy answer. It has not worked so well in the wild, at least not for me," according to Fortune's Phillip Elmer-Dewitt.

Perhaps the long knives are out in the hallways of Apple. But an October 2011 BusinessWeek profile of Forstall paints him as a mercurial, polarizing figure who has all the traits of a successful corporate politician. That is he stabs his rivals in the back and does a wonderful job of making his bosses feel like he is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

To wit, the article points out that other executives will not attend Tim Cook-led meetings with Forstall and "Some former associates of Forstall, none of whom would comment on the record for fear of alienating Apple, say he routinely takes credit for collaborative successes [and] deflects blame for mistakes."

While those worker issues do not cost Apple shareholders money or seem to trouble its customers enough for them to stop buying its products, they are a further indictment of the problems with Tim Cook's management approach.

He should solve them. If not, Apple's board should find someone who will.